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CHAPTER 6
Analyzing the Audience
CHAPTER CONTENT OUTLINE
I. Adapt to audience psychology: Who are your listeners?
A. People tend to evaluate messages in terms of their own attitudes, beliefs, and values.
Attitudes are our general evaluations of people, ideas, objects, or events. Attitudes are
based on beliefs and guide actions.
B. “If the value fits, use it.”
Audiences find a speech more motivating and relevant when the speaker evokes a
combination of the audience members’ attitudes, beliefs, and values.
C. Gauge listeners’ feelings toward the topic.
If the topic is new to the audience, the speaker should:
a. Show why the topic is relevant.
b. Relate the topic to familiar ideas about which the audience members hold positive
attitudes.
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c. Repeat important points and summarize frequently.
If the audience holds a negative attitude toward the topic:
a. Focus on establishing credibility and rapport.
b. Begin with areas of agreement.
If the audience has a positive attitude toward the topic:
a. The speaker should emphasize the side of the argument with which they already
agree.
b. Reinforce their positive attitudes with stories employing vivid language.
If this is a captive audience:
a. Stress what is most relevant to the listeners.
b. Closely monitor the length of the speech.
D. Gauge listeners’ feelings toward you as the speaker.
Audience members’ feelings toward the speaker have considerable bearing on their
attentiveness and responsiveness to the message.
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2. Rise to the top of the applicant pool with audience analysis.
II. Adapt your message to audience demographics.
A. Demographics are statistical characteristics of a given population or group.
At least eight characteristics are typically considered in the analysis of a speech
audience: age, ethnic or cultural background, socioeconomic status (including
income, occupation, and education), religious and political affiliations, gender, and
group affiliations.
Awareness of demographics will help you identify your target audience—those you
are most likely to influence in the direction you seek.
B. Age
Being aware of the audience’s age range, including generational identity, in which
C. Ethnic or cultural background
The more public speakers are aware of ethnic and cultural variations in the audience,
the more effective their speeches will be.
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Speakers should also be aware that some audience members may belong to a
co-culture whose perspectives may differ significantly from that of the speaker.
D. Socioeconomic status
Income has a pervasive influence on people’s lives and often determines their
experiences on many levels.
E. Religion
Being aware of an audience’s general religious orientation can be especially helpful
to a speaker when the speech topic is potentially controversial on religious grounds.
F. Political affiliation
Many topics automatically raise political questions—and, if the speaker isn’t careful,
listeners’ hackles.
G. Gender and sexual orientation
Gender is our social and psychological sense of ourselves as males or females.
Consideration of gender is important in audience analysis, if only as a reminder to
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III. Adapt to diverse audiences.
B. Adapt to cross-cultural values.
Identifying cultural values involves looking at major cultural patterns in various
countries and evaluating your content and mode of presentation in light of this
information.
C. Focus on universal values.
IV. Tools for learning about your audience.
A. Conduct interviews.
Interviews, individual or group, can reveal a lot about the audience interests and
needs.
You can use in-person, telephone, or email interviews, sampling your overall
audience or even interviewing just one representative member.
B. Survey the audience.
Use surveys to gather information from a larger pool of respondents by administering
a questionnaire that contains open-ended and closed-ended questions.
Closed-ended questions are designed to elicit a small range of specific answers
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b. Scale questions, also known as attitude scales, can be used to measure how
important listeners judge something to be or how frequently they engage in a
particular behavior.
Open-ended questions seek no particular response and allow the respondents to
elaborate as much as they wish.
C. Consult published sources.
Published sources, another way to learn about audience members, include both online
Published opinion polls that report on trends in attitudes can be helpful, as can
cross-cultural polls that can provide insight into how different cultures feel about an
issue.
VI. Analyze the speech setting and context.
A. The size of the audience, location, time, length of speech, and rhetorical situation, as well
as seating arrangement, availability of equipment or a microphone, other speakers, and
special events or circumstances can have a significant effect on the speech outcome.
KEY TERMS
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psychographics the study and analysis of audience members’ attitudes, beliefs, values, and
behavior as they relate to a topic
attitudes our general evaluations of people, ideas, objects, or events
beliefs the ways in which people perceive reality or determine the very existence or validity of
something
values our most enduring judgments about what is good and bad in life, as shaped by our culture
and our unique experiences within it
demographics statistical characteristics of a given population. Characteristics typically
considered in the analysis of audience members include age, gender, ethnic or cultural
background, socioeconomic status (including income, occupation, and education), and
religious and political affiliations.
target audience those individuals within the broader audience who are most likely to be
influenced in the direction the speaker seeks
generational identity the collective cultural identity of a generation
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gender social or psychological sense of self as male or female
persons with disabilities (PWD) persons whose physical or mental impairments substantially
limit their major life activities
cultural values beliefs and attitudes held by people in different cultures. They can include topics
the interviewer
fixed-alternative question closed-ended question that contains a limited choice of answers, such
as “Yes,” “No,” or “Sometimes”
scale question closed-ended question that measures the respondent’s level of agreement or
CHAPTER STUDY GUIDE
I. SUMMARY QUESTIONS
What are audience demographics, and what can they reveal about an audience?
A demographic is a statistical characteristic of a given population. Audience demographics
focus on roughly six such characteristics: age, ethnic or cultural background, socioeconomic status
(including income, occupation, and education), religion, political affiliation, and gender. Audience
What three factors reflect distinct mental states and are important to know about an
audience?
• Attitudes are predispositions to respond to people, ideas, objects, or events in evaluative ways.
• Beliefs are the ways in which people perceive reality or determine the very existence or
validity of something.
• Values are people’s enduring judgments about what is good and bad in life.
A speaker should try to identify how audience members feel—what their attitudes, beliefs, and
values are—in relation to the topic, occasion, and speaker. Knowledge of these factors will provide
the speaker with greater insight for shaping his or her specific purpose, researching the topic,
crafting key points and arguments, and establishing credibility with the audience.
What are some methods of audience analysis?
II. DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Which would be most advantageous to conducting an audience analysis of
classmates—interviews, surveys, printed material about them, or talks with others who have
delivered speeches to them? Why?
2. Why would it matter that an audience may be made up of more women than men, or more
Asian Americans than Hispanics, or older people than younger people? How would this
information affect the way you choose to prepare for and deliver a speech?
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CONTENT PRESENTATION IDEAS
I. STUDENT ACTIVITIES
1. Prepare a survey to conduct an audience analysis of your class. Include both closed-ended and
open-ended questions to determine audience members’ age; gender; socioeconomic status;
ethnic or cultural background; and social, religious, and political affiliations. Also include
some questions that will give an idea of where listeners stand in terms of argumentativeness
and receiver apprehension.
You may have students bring copies of their surveys to class to exchange with other students. Once
2. Consider the topic you plan to pursue for your next speech. Decide which of the factors
included in your audience-analysis survey are most pertinent to the development of your
speech. Write a rationale explaining why these factors should be considered in planning the
speech.
Have students include this as one of the preparation steps for their next speech assignment, and ask